Here is a game I made for my undergraduate students during the pandemic. As we moved rapidly to online teaching and learning, we spoke explicitly about independent learning strategies. I feel a need to return to this game now in my online courses. I made the game on the free LearningApps.org site. You can access the game here with the QR code. I’d love to hear your thoughts if you play or share the game with students.
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Nice to meet you: Letters and questionnaires for building relationships with students
Teaching and learning are relational processes; building significant relationships in large classes requires planning, time, and hard work. Showing genuine interest in who my students are as individuals is crucial in developing trust and a feeling of safety in my classroom. At the beginning of each academic semester, I make sure I allow my pre-service teacher students at the Oranim College of Education to introduce themselves to me in different ways. I devote most of the first lesson to an introductory letter in a few of my courses. In the past ten years or more, I have been following a strategy I learned from Professor Julian Kitchen from Brock University…
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Can you break the code? A quiet warm-up
Two of my didactics courses opened last week with the beginning of the 2022-2023 academic year. I began both lessons with a quiet activity which allowed the students to get seated, calm down, look around the room and get ready for the class in an easygoing fashion.I presented a message in code and asked the students to translate it into their notebooks. In the “Teaching English to Young Learners” course, they read a note from me in English, and in the “Literacy: Didactics for Hebrew Teaching” course, they read a quotation about language in Hebrew. While the students were reading the message, working alone or with a neighbour, I had…
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GatherED: Global Teacher Education “Languages as tools for developing global citizenship”
I am in a hotel in Crete writing to process an inspiring three-day inspiring workshop funded by the Erasmus + program. When I arrived in Rethymnon in Crete from Israel, I knew I would be participating in a GatherED international workshop about language education in multi-lingual and multi-cultural classroom environments. I immediately discovered that the learning was engrossing, and the powerful emotional connections with fellow participants extended well beyond any expectation. I flew to Rethymno with four Oranim College of Education colleagues. I knew Janina Kahn Horwitz, the head of my department, very well, but the others were only acquaintances. Representing the college together in an international context instantly bonded…
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“More than the calf wants to suck the cow wants to suckle”
It’s that time of year again – assignments, follow-ups, reminders, and grades. It’s the time of the year when I look at my Google Sheets for each course, fill in the grades from recent assessment tasks, and organise the data. This is often the period when it becomes evident that one or more students will fail the course. Nothing is a surprise here. Students who are behind or are at risk of failing have had numerous ‘nudges’ during the semester. They have had warnings that they are close to the attendance quota cut-off mark, can’t miss additional lessons, or have received emails that they haven’t submitted work. These messages always…
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Giving students a choice: A win-win situation
“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets “We make our choices; then our choices make us.” Anonymous Giving students a choice is an effective way of differentiating my teaching. In my experience, student choice increases involvement and engagement in the course, elevates motivation and reduces stress. When learners read a list of options and identify ones they can achieve, they experience a sense of “I can do that!” empowerment. Granting choice in academic contexts also prepares learners to take responsibility for their progress. Additional benefits are learners knowing their strengths, exploring…
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Everyone is talking about ‘back to normal’
‘Back to normal’, everyone is talking about ‘back to normal’. What is normal? Is it possible to go back after what we have experienced? None of us knows if we are in the wake of the COVID19 crisis or in the midst of another of the unfolding waves of the virus; none of us can tell if the routine we are creating at present will remain stable for an extended period. Everything is still uncertain and fragile, and we are all learning to live with unpredictability. I constantly remind my pre-service teacher students that the flexibility they are acquiring in these ever-changing dynamic times will serve them well in their…
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Chat stations: Moving a favourite teaching strategy online
I am always searching for ways to encourage my students to be active and involved in the lesson; I aim for all to be engaged in the discussion. A whole-class discussion usually means a few students contributing, directing most of the comments to the teacher ping pong style. Even if the teacher decides to hear every group member, it can only ever be a short statement because of time limitations.I follow and deeply admire Jennifer Gonzales, a teacher blogger at Cult of Pedagogy. A few years ago, Gonzales wrote a post on ‘chat stations’, a teaching strategy that resonated with me, and I adopted it immediately. The simple idea involves…
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It’s not homework!
This morning I want to share one of the issues I grappled with this year in my online flipped learning courses for pre-service teachers. For those unfamiliar with the concept of flipped learning, here is a short explanation: Before I describe my experience, I will remind myself and my readers that this wasn’t a routine online learning situation; this was learning forced online in response to the pandemic. My students were learning 100% online for most of the year and were participating in a wide range of courses presented in different ways. Many students were struggling academically and financially, some were juggling study with small children present, and others were working…
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Pondering plagiarism: 30 questions
I spent last week grading assignments. In one course my task included a choice of content and questions. I was almost at the end of the forty-plus papers when I encountered one different in structure. I was annoyed to see that the student hadn’t followed my instructions. ‘Why didn’t he read the instructions; they were crystal clear? What didn’t he understand?’ I asked myself while reading. I decided to ignore the structure of the paper initially and to concentrate on the content. As I read, I could sense that the student hadn’t written the piece. Even though the course was a-synchronous with little inter-personal communication, I could feel something suspicious…
